House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Wednesday stressed his desire for Congress to “urgently” extend enhanced Obamacare subsidies, which are set to expire this year, before open enrollment begins Nov. 1.
Some rank-and-file Democrats have suggested the Sept. 30 deadline to fund the government could serve as ideal leverage to get Republicans to agree to an extension, but their leaders have yet to make that a formal demand.
Mr. Jeffries, New York Democrat, declined to directly answer a question on whether he thinks the enhanced subsidies, also known as premium tax credits, must be extended this month. But he touted them as a priority when government funding negotiations begin in earnest.
“The open enrollment period begins in less than two months. It begins on November 1,” Mr. Jeffries said. “So this is one of many issues that should be addressed urgently by the United States Congress in terms of making sure we stop the effort to continue to rip health care away from the American people and lean into an effort to actually protect the health care of the American people.”
Mr. Jeffries said Democrats want to do more on that front than just extend enhanced tax subsidies, but he didn’t make specific demands.
Democrats created the premium tax credits to help subsidize health insurance plans purchased on the Obamacare exchanges as part of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
They later enhanced the amount of the tax credits and broadened their availability to people with higher incomes as part of their 2021 pandemic relief law, the American Rescue Plan, and extended those enhancements the next year in the Inflation Reduction Act.
The base tax credits don’t expire, but the enhancements first enacted in 2021 will sunset at the end of the year unless Congress acts.
Mr. Jeffries warned that failing to renew the enhanced subsidies will exacerbate Americans’ worries about being able to afford health care after Republicans already voted this year to cut Medicaid, mostly for illegal immigrants they said shouldn’t be on it in the first place.
“Millions of Americans are about to experience dramatic increases in their health care premiums, co-pays and deductibles,” he said. “Millions of families will incur thousands of dollars in additional health care costs a year when they are barely making it right now.”
Republicans largely oppose the Obamacare subsidies as a matter of policy, but some are concerned about being blamed for rising premiums if the enhancements lapse. GOP leaders have left the door open to a possible negotiation on the matter but prefer to keep it separate from the government funding talks.
Mr. Jeffries is set to meet with Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat, Wednesday afternoon to discuss their approach.
Mr. Schumer has also declined to make any public demands for the government funding negotiations outside of wanting to meet with GOP leaders to negotiate a bipartisan solution. He and Mr. Jeffries have said Democrats will support only a government funding bill they help negotiate.
The Democratic leaders want to avoid a repeat of the March scenario in which Republicans muscled their own stopgap spending bill through Congress and dared Democrats to vote against it.
Mr. Schumer took heat from Democrats inside and outside Congress for supporting the GOP stopgap in an effort to avert a government shutdown, which he argued at the time would be worse for the American people than the partisan spending bill.
